In our politically saturated culture, hardly an event becomes a major
news story without some group claiming that it proves that government
should enact its political agenda. This practice is endemic among left-wing
organizations, although conservatives are by no means exempt. So it is
hardly surprising that some are using the recent spate of deadly sniper
attacks in Maryland and northern Virginia to press for more gun control
laws.

In a recent press release, Sarah Brady used the sniper shootings as an
opportunity to remind voters that the federal assault weapons ban will
expire in less than two years. Yet that ban is currently in place and
has obviously failed to prevent these shootings. If a weapon covered by
that ban was used in these attacks, then the perpetrator (or perpetrators)
was able to obtain it despite the law. If another type of gun was used,
and there are legal weapons with such capabilities, then the ban is utterly
irrelevant to this situation. The fact of the matter is it is largely
a ban on scary-looking guns regardless of their capabilities.

Guns in the wrong hands can do great evil, snuffing out innocent lives.
No one suggests that we disarm the police as a result. This is because
the opposite is also true - guns in the right hands can save lives. But
this does not only apply to police officers; by some estimates, there
are 2.5 million defensive gun uses per annum by private citizens. Nationally
syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell has written that "Weapons matter
primarily when the wrong people have them and the right people don't."

Too often, proponents of gun control fail to make these important distinctions,
instead arguing that the very presence of guns increases criminality and
that anyone who objects to their various policy proposals must want to
enable criminals to use guns. The "gun lobby" is frequently
presented as either being in cahoots with criminals or simply indifferent
to the consequences of gun violence in their zeal to enrich firearms manufacturers.

This is the line taken by some who argue in favor of a national ballistic
fingerprint database. When the Bush administration did not immediately
endorse this idea, although it did agree to study it, Congressman Jim
Moran (D-VA) asked why anyone would want to "protect" someone
like the serial sniper, as if that was the administration's objective.

Under this proposal, gun manufacturers would test-fire each new gun and
give the government the bullet and shell casing so they could enter the
markings into a database. Bullets and shell casings found at crime scenes
could then be referenced against this database in order to locate the
weapon's serial number and owner. If such a system were in place now,
this could conceivably help the sniper investigation.

Dick Meyer, in an "Against the Grain" commentary posted on
CBSNews.com, suggests that the only obstacle to creating a national ballistics
fingerprint bank is the irrational opposition of groups like the National
Rifle Association. A veteran CBS reporter and producer, Meyer calls the
idea a "no-brainer," but it does carry some practical problems.
There are 200 million guns already in circulation that would not be covered
by the database. Many criminals use stolen guns. The fingerprint can be
altered. Most importantly, there are serious questions about the accuracy
of ballistic fingerprinting.

But the main reason the NRA and other gun-rights organizations oppose
the idea is one that gun-tracking proponents like Meyer fail to acknowledge.
Civil rights attorney Don Kates, a leading scholar on firearms issues,
once wrote an essay entitled "Poisoning the Well for Gun Control"
(which is featured as a chapter in the book he wrote with criminologist
Gary Kleck, Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control) in which he
argued that most Americans favor both the right to armed self-defense
and moderate gun controls, but the not-so-veiled prohibitionist sentiments
of antigun activists have actually made the enactment of modest controls
harder. By shifting the emphasis away from keeping guns out of the wrong
hands toward a more sweeping animus against guns, gun owners have come
to oppose even moderate controls as incremental steps toward a ban. (Liberal
columnist James Hall, writing in The American Partisan, was careful
to contrast ballistic fingerprint-tracking with a prohibition on gun ownership
in his endorsement of the proposal.)

If gun owners could be sure that a ballistics fingerprint collection
was not a prelude to registration and confiscation, few would object to
pursuing the idea to whatever extent it could be made feasible. It is
the antigun statements and premises of Brady, the Million Mom March and
other leading forces for gun control, rather than NRA paranoia, that has
elicited opposition.

The debate is likely to continue. And those living around the Beltway
will live in fear until the killer in their midst is stopped, while those
living in the Beltway will continue on with their political agendas.

Exploiting mass murder
by Dr. Michael S. Brown (October 21, 2002)
You had to expect that the usual suspects in the gun control debate
would use the killer in the Washington suburbs in their fight against
a constitutional right, says Dr. Michael S. Brown